The Romanian composer George Enescu (1881/1955) wrote a lot of chamber music including works for violin and piano.
His imaginative compositions are beautifully performed here by the Dutch/English violinist Daniel Rowland and the pianist Natacha Kudritskaya from the Ukraine.
George Enescu was a Romanian violinist, composer, conductor and teacher (educated the young violinist Yehudi Menuhin) who studied by Jules Massenet and Gabriel Fauré in Vienna and later Paris. His compositions show characteristics of the Late Romantic style, the French music from the early 20th century, with its frequent use of chromatics and Romanian folk music, which you hear in the ‘Violin Sonata No 3 in A-Minor Op. 25‘, the opening piece of this wonderful CD. The gypsy scale, Romanian themes and the way of playing show a Romanian (Gypsy) signature which is amazingly energetically and subdued.
The duo Daniel Rowland / Natacha Kudritskaya performs the compositions with energetic precision. The implementation is very accurate. Their musical approach is delicious and inextricably linked to the listener. Intimate passages also sound really pleasing and intimate while the dynamic parts are excellently energetic and lively.
Like his youth work, the ‘Violin Sonata in F minor,opus 6′ that Enescu wrote when he was 17 years old, the last piece ‘Impressions d’Enfance’ reflects on his childhood, on the magical but also bleak side of his early years when his mother told him not to play with other children, afraid as she was that he would become sick.
The capricious composition opens with a distinctive violin solo. The piano enters in a lovely and finely played twinkling mood.
This composition reflects the uncertainty as well as the continuation of one of the most remarkable composers from Romania in the 20th century.
Loose translation of the Dutch review